Central draft for plows



L.. BEGON. Central Draft for Plows.

No. 227,406. Patented May' 11. .1880

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".PEI'ERS, PHOTO-L|TMOGRAPHER, WASmNGTON. LG;

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

LOUIS BEGON, OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.

CENTRAL DRAFT FOR PLOWS.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 227,406, dated May 11, 1880,

Application filed December 27, 1879.

To all whom it may concern Be it known that I, LOUIS BEGON, of the city and county of San Francisco, and State of California, have invented a Central Draft for Plows and I hereby declare the following tobe a full, clear, and exact description thereof.

My invention relates to certain improvements in the method of operating plows.

The object of this invention is to apply the power used for plowing direct to the center of resistance on the mold-board, instead of decomposing said power, as it is done at present, in order to resist the pressures of the earth upon the mold-board, as will be more fully described by reference to the accompanying drawings, in which- Figures 1 and 2 are diagrams illustrating my principle. Fig. 3 shows the guide-beam. Fig. at is a view of the plow.

A plow may be conceived as being a compound and combination of two wedges, one advancing horizontally and raising thefu-rrowslice, while the other, being placed laterally along the beam, throws or shifts said slice, usually to the right of the plowman.

Considering the mode of action of the power as it is now applied to these wedges, the lateral wedge, for instance, is represented in Fig. 1, A B being the horizontal projection of the beam, and C D that of the lateral part of the mold-board. We see that as the plow advances it is struck by the earth in the direction of the dotted lines, a part of the effect of the same being to throw the plow sidewise toward the left of the plowman. To obviate that side pressure and maintain the plow advancing in the direction of the line A B, which it must follow, the horses are usually hitched up at a point, E, on the regulator, instead of at the end of the beam, and so their united strength is decomposed, and a part of it is used to push the end B of the beam sidewise to the left, in order to balance the side pressure on the mold-board; but for such an offset to take place there must be a fulcrum on the other side of the plow, and it is in fact found in such a position at point F, upon the ground not plowed yet. The plow having to be pulled through these opposed pressures, which are even strong enough sometimes to break the beam, requires more power certainly than it would if the power could be applied more directly at a point, K, on the center of resistance, and covering the true resultant, K M, of all the forces represented by the dotted lines. It is what I propose to do. H

Let us suppose that a rope is attached at point K on the mold-board, said point K being at such a place as to have equal pressure on both sides of it upon C K and upon D K. The horses at M pull in the direction K M as the dotted lines run. (Such an arrangement is, of course, a practical impossibility, and is here only a theoretical suggestion.) But it is evident that so long as the pressure shall remain the same on each side of point K the plow will advance in the right direction; but if a new resistance, N, comes to strike the moldboard at some point in K D, the effect will be to throw the plow toward the left, and the position will haveto be rectified. In order to do that, suppose that the rope passes through a ring, E, at the end of the regulator, which is attached, as usual, at the end of the beam. The plow being struck by the new resistance Na stone, for instance-will have a tendency to move toward the left and assume the position shown in Fig. 2, and the ring, then pressing against the rope, will cause it to bend, as seen in the figure; but the point M, which represents the shoulders of the horses, is a fixed and immovable point, and the horses, always pulling in the original direction, will straighten the rope and bring the plow back to the right direction without they or the plowman being aware of it.

It has been supposed in the foregoing explanations that a rope was attached to the moldboard; but such an arrangement being practically impossible, I use, in lieu of the rope, an additional beam, G, provided with 'a strong iron curved standard, H, and resembling somewhat a pick, as seen in Fig. 3. Now, if I apply the lower end of the curved standard to the back side of the mold board precisely back of point K, which is the center of resistance or pressure, and if I pull from the end of the beam G of said curved standard H, just the same as we pull from the end of the handle of a common pick or of a rake, it will be seen that the plow will advance the same as it did with the rope, and if the said handle or beam passes through a proper ring, as the rope did, the horses which are hitched at the end of said beam will do through it the pulling and the corrections the same as with the supposed rope.

In practice it would not be easy to apply the lower end of the curved standard H to the back side of the mold-board, and in the real construction I do not take such a method; but I have a transverse bar of iron (represented by P K, Fig. 4) bolted upon the land-side and upon the back of the mold-board, and the point of the curved standard may be slotted, as'at I, or otherwise fitted to en gage or catch said bar at point R. The effect will then be the same as if it were direct on the mold-board. In the present case I have shown a'construction which illustrates the action of that additional beam; but its construction may be varied from the present without materially altering the principle.

The ring E only represents the guide, which may be made of suitable form, and made adjustable in either direction.

J is a second guide for the beam G, and this may also be made adjustable.

Having thus described my invention, what I claim as new, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is

1. In a plow having the mold-board united in a rigid manner to a main beam, the supplemental and independent beam G, with its arm H, said arm beingadapted to apply the draftpower directly in a line approximating the center of resistance, while the draft-beam is allowed a free movement about that point and accommodates itself to unequal resistances, substantially as herein described.

2. In .a plow having the mold-board rigidly united to a main beam and provided with a supplemental draft-beam and arm, whereby the power may be applied in the line of the center of resistance,. while the draft-beam is allowed to accommodate itself to unequal resistances, the support and ring E, movable and adjustable at the end of the stationary beam, whereby the deviations of the plow consequent to occasional and equal resistances are limited and corrected, substantially as herein described.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand.

LOUIS BEGON.

Witnesses S. H. NoURsE, FRANK A. BROOKS. 

